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Don't fall into the anti-AI hype

antirez.com

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Re: Don't fall into the anti-AI hype

#461

Post by rparet »

zeroonetwothree wrote: post #311
embedding-shape wrote: post #95

> But what was the fire inside you, when you coded till night to see your project working? It was building. I feel like this is not the same for everyone. For some people, the "fire" is literally about "I control a computer", for others "I'm solving a problem for others", and yet for others "I made something that made others smile/cry/feel emotions" and so on. I think there is a section of programmer who actually do…

You’re right of course. For me there’s no flow state possible with LLM “coding”. That makes it feel miserable instead of joyous. Sitting around waiting while it spits out tokens that I then have to carefully look over and tweak feels like very hard work. Compared to entering flow and churning out those tokens myself, which feels effortless once I get going. Probably other people feel differently.

You're not alone. I definitely feel like this is / will be a major adaptation required for software engineers going forward. I don't have any solutions to offer you - but I will say that the state that's enabled by fast feedback loops wasn't always the case. For most of my career build times were much, much longer than they are today, as an example. We had to work around that to maintain flow, and we'll have to work around this, now.

Re: Don't fall into the anti-AI hype

#462

Post by Diti »

jstummbillig wrote: post #453
silcoon wrote: post #445

I perfectly agree with antirez about the importance of AI and the benefit for coders. In the last month we saw a big jump and we all are in the middle of the biggest technological revolution since the internet. He summarised the benefits, but omitted the rest. Why we don't have to be anti-AI? Why in his opinion is just "HYPE"? I didn't find any answer in his post. He doesn't analyse the cons of AI and explain why som…

There is no hard part. The anti-AI position has simply become trite. The idea is that agentic coding does not work. Today, it does work.

It only works for languages and frameworks that are already in the training data (duh). It still is mostly useless when you need to create something from scratch in an unstable language.

That, and you can’t also get the amazing results if you’re poor or have bad internet.

Re: Don't fall into the anti-AI hype

#463

Post by yicmoggIrl »

threethirtytwo wrote: post #330
embedding-shape wrote: post #95

> But what was the fire inside you, when you coded till night to see your project working? It was building. I feel like this is not the same for everyone. For some people, the "fire" is literally about "I control a computer", for others "I'm solving a problem for others", and yet for others "I made something that made others smile/cry/feel emotions" and so on. I think there is a section of programmer who actually do…

This article is not about whether programming is fun, elegant, creative, or personally fulfilling. It is about business value. Programming exists, at scale, because it produces economic value. That value translates into revenue, leverage, competitive advantage, and ultimately money. For decades, a large portion of that value could only be produced by human labor. Now, increasingly, it cannot be assumed that this will…

Excellent comment (even "mini essay"). I'm unsure if you've written it with AI-assistance, but even if that's the case, I'll tolerate it.

I have two things to add.

> This is not a moral failing. It is a psychological one.

(1) I disagree: it's not a failing at all. Resisting displacement, resisting that your identity, existence, meaning found in work, be taken away from you, is not a failing.

Such resistance might be futile, yes; but that doesn't make it a failing. If said resistance won, then nobody would call it a failing.

The new technology might just win, and not adapting to that reality, refusing that reality, could perhaps be called a failing. But it's also a choice.

For example, if software engineering becomes a role to review AI slop all day, then it simply devolves, for me, into just another job that may be lucrative but has zero interest for me.

(2) You emphasize identity. I propose a different angle: meaning, and intrinsic motivation. You mention:

> economic value of programming is increasingly detached from human identity

I want to rephrase it: what has been meaningful to me thus far remains meaningful, but it no longer allows me to make ends meet, because my tribe no longer appreciates when I act out said activity that is so meaningful to me.

THAT is the real tragedy. Not the loss of identity -- which you seem to derive from the combination of money and prestige (BTW, I don't fully dismiss that idea). Those are extrinsic motivations. It's the sudden unsustainability of a core, defining activity that remains meaningful.

The whole point of all these AI-apologist articles is that "it has happened in the past, time and again; humanity has always adapted, and we're now better off for it". Never mind those generations that got walked over and fell victim to the revolution of the day.

In other words, the AI-apologists say, "don't worry, you'll either starve (which is fine, it has happened time and agani), or just lose a large chunk of meaning in your life".

Not resisting that is what would be a failing.

Re: Don't fall into the anti-AI hype

#464

Post by notatoad »

embedding-shape wrote: post #95

> But what was the fire inside you, when you coded till night to see your project working? It was building. I feel like this is not the same for everyone. For some people, the "fire" is literally about "I control a computer", for others "I'm solving a problem for others", and yet for others "I made something that made others smile/cry/feel emotions" and so on. I think there is a section of programmer who actually do…

> I think there is a section of programmer who actually do like the actual typing of letters, numbers and special characters into a computer

but luckily for us, we can still do that, and it's just as fun as it ever was. LLMs don't take anything away from the fun of actually writing code, unless you choose to let them.

if anything the LLMs make it more fun, because the boring bits can now be farmed out while you work on the fun bits. no, i don't really want to make another CRUD UI, but if the project i'm working on needs one i can just let claude code do that for me while i go back to working on the stuff that's actually interesting.

Re: Don't fall into the anti-AI hype

#465

Post by gradus_ad »

It seems that as the tools available to developers have become more abstracted allowing them to do more with less, their ability to command higher salaries and prestige has only grown and grown. LLM's are just a continuation of this trend.

The naive view considers only the small scale ease of completing a task in isolation and expects compensation to be proportional to it. But that's not how things work. Yes abstraction makes individual tasks easier to complete, but with the extra time available more can be done, and as more is done and can be done, new complexities emerge. And as an individual can do more, the importance of trust grows as well. This is why CEO's make disproportionately more than their employees, because while the complexity of their work may scale only linearly with their position, or not at all even beyond a certain point, the impact of their decisions grows exponentially.

LLM's are just going to enhance the power and influence of software developers.

Re: Don't fall into the anti-AI hype

#466

Post by rowanajmarshall »

notatoad wrote: post #464
embedding-shape wrote: post #95

> But what was the fire inside you, when you coded till night to see your project working? It was building. I feel like this is not the same for everyone. For some people, the "fire" is literally about "I control a computer", for others "I'm solving a problem for others", and yet for others "I made something that made others smile/cry/feel emotions" and so on. I think there is a section of programmer who actually do…

> I think there is a section of programmer who actually do like the actual typing of letters, numbers and special characters into a computer but luckily for us, we can still do that, and it's just as fun as it ever was. LLMs don't take anything away from the fun of actually writing code, unless you choose to let them. if anything the LLMs make it more fun, because the boring bits can now be farmed out while you work…

I think the downside is the developers who love the action of coding managed to accomplish several things at once - they got to code, and create things, and get paid lots for doing it.

AI coding makes creating things far more efficient (as long as you use AI), and will likely mean you don't get paid much (unless you use AI).

You can still code for the fun of it, but you don't get the ancillary benefits.

Re: Don't fall into the anti-AI hype

#467

Post by falcor84 »

zeroonetwothree wrote: post #311
embedding-shape wrote: post #95

> But what was the fire inside you, when you coded till night to see your project working? It was building. I feel like this is not the same for everyone. For some people, the "fire" is literally about "I control a computer", for others "I'm solving a problem for others", and yet for others "I made something that made others smile/cry/feel emotions" and so on. I think there is a section of programmer who actually do…

You’re right of course. For me there’s no flow state possible with LLM “coding”. That makes it feel miserable instead of joyous. Sitting around waiting while it spits out tokens that I then have to carefully look over and tweak feels like very hard work. Compared to entering flow and churning out those tokens myself, which feels effortless once I get going. Probably other people feel differently.

> For me there’s no flow state possible with LLM “coding”.

I would argue that it's the same question as whether it's possible to get into a flow state when being the "navigator" in a pair-programming session. I feel you and agree that it's not quite the same flow state as typing the code yourself, but when a session with a human programmer or Claude Code is going well for me, I am definitely in something quite close to flow myself, and I can spend hours in the back and forth. But as others in this thread said, it's about the size of the tasks you give it.

Re: Don't fall into the anti-AI hype

#468

Post by y1n0 »

camel-cdr wrote: post #420
simonw wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a pretty common position: "I don't worry about getting left behind - it will only take a few weeks to catch up again". I don't think that's true. I'm really good at getting great results out of coding agents and LLMs. I've also been using LLMs for code on an almost daily basis since ChatGPT's release on November 30th 2022. That's more than three years ago now. Meanwhile I see a constant flow of complaints fro…

How many thing you learned working with LLMs in 2022 are relevant today? How many things you learned now are relevant in the future?

This question misses the point. Everything you learn today informs how you learn in the future.

Re: Don't fall into the anti-AI hype

#469

Post by conradfr »

zjzkshz wrote: post #286
embedding-shape wrote: post #95

> But what was the fire inside you, when you coded till night to see your project working? It was building. I feel like this is not the same for everyone. For some people, the "fire" is literally about "I control a computer", for others "I'm solving a problem for others", and yet for others "I made something that made others smile/cry/feel emotions" and so on. I think there is a section of programmer who actually do…

> I think there is a section of programmer who actually do like the actual typing of letters Do people actually spend a significant time typing? After I moved beyond the novice stage it’s been an inconsequential amount of time. What it still serves is a thorough review of every single line in a way that is essentially equivalent to what a good PR review looks like.

Do people actually enjoy reviewing PRs?

See, that also works.

Re: Don't fall into the anti-AI hype

#470

Post by threethirtytwo »

throw1235435 wrote: post #431
threethirtytwo wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This article is not about whether programming is fun, elegant, creative, or personally fulfilling. It is about business value. Programming exists, at scale, because it produces economic value. That value translates into revenue, leverage, competitive advantage, and ultimately money. For decades, a large portion of that value could only be produced by human labor. Now, increasingly, it cannot be assumed that this will…

Sure; I absolutely agree and more to the point SWE's and their ideologies compared to other professions have meant they are the first on the chopping block. But what do you tell those people; that they no longer matter? Do they still matter? How will they matter? They are no different than practitioners of any other craft - humans in general derive value partly from the value they can give to their fellow man. If the…

I agree with you that the implications are bleak. For many people they are not abstract or philosophical. They are about income, stability, and the ability to keep a life intact. In that sense the fear is completely rational.

What stands out to me is that there seems to be a threshold where reality itself becomes too pessimistic to consciously accept.

At that point people do not argue with conclusions. They argue with perception.

You can watch the systems work. You can see code being written, bugs being fixed, entire workflows compressed. You can see the improvement curve. None of this is hidden. And yet people will look straight at it and insist it does not count, that it is fake, that it is toy output, that it will never matter in the real world. Not because the evidence is weak, but because the implications are unbearable.

That is the part that feels almost surreal. It is not ignorance. It is not lack of intelligence. It is the mind refusing to integrate a fact because the downstream consequences are too negative to live with. The pessimism is not in the claim. It is in the reality itself.

Humans do this all the time. When an update threatens identity, livelihood, or future security, self deception becomes a survival mechanism. We selectively ignore what we see. We raise the bar retroactively. We convince ourselves that obvious trend lines somehow stop right before they reach us. This is not accidental. It is protective.

What makes it unsettling is seeing it happen while the evidence is actively running in front of us. You are holding reality in one hand and watching people try to look away without admitting they are looking away. They are not saying “this is scary and I do not know how to cope.” They are saying “this is not real,” because that is easier.

So yes, the questions you raise are the real ones. Do people still matter. How will they matter. What happens when economic value shifts faster than lives can adapt. Those questions are heavy, and I do not think anyone has clean answers yet.

But pretending the shift is not happening does not make the answers kinder. It just postpones the reckoning.

The disturbing thing is not that reality is pessimistic. It is that at some point reality becomes so pessimistic that people start editing their own perception of it. They unsee what is happening in order to preserve who they think they are.

That is the collision we are watching. And it is far stranger than a technical debate about code quality.

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